“Hurt? Me? Woman, what are you babbling about?” Harry asked, shaking his hand and pushing his spectacles back.
“I heard a shot! The pistol was pointed toward you! When you shoved McTavish out of its path, you were in the way! Where are you bleeding? Are you in pain?”
Plum started checking over her husband’s arms and chest, but he put a stop to her stripping him bare in front of everyone only by grasping both of her hands and shaking her slightly.
“Plum, I’m not injured. The pistol discharged without striking anyone. If you look to your right, you can see where it struck what’s standing of that wall.”
Plum looked, and then sagged against him in relief. “Oh, Harry! I’m so glad you’re not hurt.”
“Well, as to that, so am I,” Harry grinned. “This brute hasn’t fared as well, however.”
“Oh, he deserves to be unconscious,” Plum said indistinctly, her face pressed against her husband’s neck. She didn’t even spare a glance to the man who lay fallen behind him. Harry and the children were all that mattered.
“He does, but I would have liked to ask him a few questions. We’ll just have to hope he didn’t scramble his wits when he hit his head on that rock,” Harry said, pushing Plum gently from his chest to squat down and examine the man. “Damn. Well, I guess there’s only one left. Nick, thought you’d be here. You didn’t kill that one, did you?”
“I assumed you’d want him alive,” the burglar Nick said. The man who had grabbed her by the arm was lying on the ground, moaning and cradling his head.
“Good. Plum, you and Thom take the children to the carriage. Ben, you go with them.”
Plum, shaking a little in the aftermath of the attack, rubbed her arms. “Do you know Thom’s burglar?”
Harry grinned. Now was not the time to explain about Nick. “We’ve met.”
“Oh, what will you do now?”
He prodded the man with the toe of his boot. “Hmm? Oh, Nick and I will stay behind and have a little chat with our friend here. And make sure the other ruffian is taken into custody. Is this all there were, two of them?”
“No, there were four all together, but the other two were in a separate carriage. I didn’t see them when we arrived,” Thom said.
“Must have run off once they realized there was trouble,” Harry mused. “Ah well, we have the one. You ladies go on home, now.”
“I think we should stay. You may need some help persuading him to talk,” Plum said, giving him a look that warmed him to his toes. No other wife but Plum would want to stay and torture the truth out of a roughneck. Was it any wonder he loved her so? Still, such business was not for women.
It took some convincing, but at last Harry managed to get Plum and the children off toward home, but only after he promised both ladies that he would fill them in with all the information he gleaned from the hoodlum.
“And now, my good fellow, let us have a little discussion,” Harry said cheerfully as he turned back to the battered man. Nick grinned. The man looked like he was going to be sick.
It didn’t take much to make the bloodied man talk — faced with the threat of a couple of fingers broken, and he sang like a nightingale — but unfortunately, he was evidently not in the confidence of the man who had arranged the kidnapping.
“I don’t know ‘im,” the thug Davey whined, nursing his fingers. “Max, ‘e was me boss. I worked for ‘im. Max is the one what knew ‘is nibs.”
“His nibs? The man who hired Max was a gentleman?”
“Aye, talked right proper, and dressed fair to make yer eyes water.”
“His name,” Harry snarled.
“Don’t know it, ‘onest I don’t!” Davey shrieked as Harry raised his fist. “Max never tol’ me, ‘e just said as we ‘ad a job to snaffle some cossets, that’s all ‘e be tellin’ me, so ‘elp me God!”
Harry questioned the man for an hour before he passed out, but long before that he realized that what the man claimed was true — he was just an underling, hired as a body to help kidnap the children, nothing more. He damned the situation that left the leader, Max, insensible. He was so close to finding out who was behind the attacks. If only he had arrived earlier…
“Can you take care of them, Nick?”
“I’d be happy to,” Nick said as he heaved the unconscious man none too gently onto his shoulder. “I’ll take him to the police, shall I?”
“Yes.” Harry stood staring down at the ginger-haired Max. “I’d best speak to the magistrate about this, but first I’m going to have a sketch of his face made and take it to the Home Office. Maybe someone will recognize him.”
Nick hesitated, worry furrowing his brow. “Are you in some sort of trouble?”
Harry swore under his breath as he turned away from the man. His face was grim and set with determination as he admitted the truth to himself. He was no closer to naming the man behind the plot against his family. He would have to redouble his attempts to dig out the proof that was needed to identify the villain. “It’s nothing I can’t take care of.”
CHAPTER Fifteen
“Well?” Thom asked two days later as she burst into Plum’s sitting room.
“I have an appointment tonight to meet with a man your burglar says will take care of my problem,” Plum said triumphantly.
“Oh, thank heavens,” Thom said, plopping gracelessly into a nearby chair. “I just knew Nick wouldn’t let me down. He’s so wonderful, don’t you think? He was very brave at Vauxhall.”
Plum glanced from her niece to the letter she’d received from the burglar named Nick. “He writes legibly, I’ll give him that, but Thom — he’s a burglar.”
“I know,” Thom said, kicking her foot idly as she slouched back. “He’s a very good one, too, I’m sure.”
“A burglar is not at all a suitable beau for a young woman of your family,” Plum said sternly, although she suspected it would do little good. Thom was always rescuing some needy creature or another — usually it was cats and dogs, but evidently now she’d felt this burglar needed saving. “I’m sure he’s not at all nice for you to know. He isn’t—”
Thom’s face set into a mulish expression as she sat up. “He isn’t what?”
Plum’s hands fluttered about expressively. She hated to sound like a snob, but there were limits to how far she was willing to bend for Thom, and burglars were that limit. “He’s not a gentleman.”
“Hrmph. I don’t care about that. He’s my friend. I like him. And he saved Harry’s children from certain death. Twice!”
Plum bit back her objections. Thom was absolutely right, no matter how unsuitable the young man was for her, he had saved the children, and for that she would be eternally grateful to him. Perhaps once Harry had caught the person responsible for the horrible attacks, she could do something for the man. Clean him up, educate him, find him a good job…“As you say, we all owe him a great deal, and I will be happy to do what I can to show my gratitude. Now, I have been busy writing, and I’d like your opinion on some of the scenarios I’ve created.”
“Scenarios?” Thom leaned forward to peer at the sheets of paper on Plum’s writing desk. “What scenarios?”
“Scenarios for Charles, of course. Oh, speaking of him, I’ve had another letter. That makes the third in as many days.”
Thom made a rude face. Plum, who agreed wholeheartedly with her niece’s unspoken opinion, said nothing but handed the letter over, watching as Thom read it with growing indignation.
“He has nerve threatening you like that! How dare he?”
“Evidently he feels that my lack of response to his demands for money are an indication I am not taking care of the matter.” A particularly unwholesome — for one Mr. Charles de Spenser — smile curled her lips. “Little does he know that I am, indeed, taking steps to resolve the situation.”